Stream Police: Gone, But Not Forgotten Edition

Television is a cruel and fickle thing, this year’s hot show could suddenly find itself without a home a mere few months after exploding in popularity. Television shows come and go, but thanks to online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, these shows can enjoyed long after their cancellation, for better or worse. Today, I’ll be looking at a group of shows on Netflix that ended prematurely and left us with a hole in our hearts.

The Cleveland Show

I know this one will get me some flak from some of my fellow writers, but I really enjoyed The Cleveland Show. This Family Guy spin-off was often criticized as being nothing more than a “black version” of Family Guy, the two shows even poked fun at this in several fourth wall breaking jokes. While I will admit the first few episodes of the show are remarkably similar to Family Guy, the show really does come into its own, especially in its second season. While the show ended up sliding into mediocrity during its fourth season, by that point the writing was on the wall that the show would be cancelled and I can’t blame the show’s production staff for giving up, especially after McFarlane himself left the show’s voice cast in the later part of season 3.

The show would sadly be shelved after not being renewed by Fox in 2013, despite claims by Fox that the show hadn’t be cancelled. While the Brown family would end up back in Quahog after the cancellation, sadly the show’s memorable secondary cast were lost in the transition and will likely never be seen again outside of syndication.

ALF

The late eighties was packed full of memorable sitcomes like The Golden Girls and Married with Children, and even saw the birth of The Simpsons, one of the longest running animated shows of all time. Among the memorable show to come out of the latter half of the decade, and one of my favorites, was ALF. If you’re unfamiliar, ALF tells the story the Tanner family who, after a strange storm, find a spaceship crashed through the roof of their garage, with a small, furry alien inside. Though the family initially calls him ALF, short for alien life form, his name is Gordon Shumway, the last survivor from his home planet of Melmac.

As ALF adjusts to life on Earth he finds that things he did at home aren’t as welcome here, like eating his favorite food, cats. The show ran for four years before being abruptly cancelled and left on a cliffhanger ending. While the cliffhanger would eventually be resolved in the form of a TV movie, but sadly, it isn’t available on any streaming service at this time. ALF is a good show to revisit, its a little dated, but it holds up well despite never receiving a proper ending.

Futurama

Few cancelled shows will ever receive the type of treatment that Futurama saw during the show’s run. It initially began airing in 1999 before it was initially cancelled by Fox in 2003. The show would then see a revival in 2008 in the form of four direct-to-video movies that would continue the story of the Planet Express crew, the final film eventually ended on a cliffhanger, in hopes of a revival for the series. This finally came in 2010 on Comedy Central when the show was brought back once again and aired for three more seasons, lasting until 2013. After being brought back from cancellation twice, the show finally received a proper finale, though some members of the show’s crew hope the breath life into the series once again in the future.

Futurama holds up amazingly well, at least the Fox seasons do, and its amazing how many things the show predicted when you think about the time it aired. It’s clever, well written and has a great cast of characters. Futurama is certainly something worth watching, especially if you’re into animated comedies.

Daria

While I know this series has been featured on Stream Police before, I feel that it bears repeating just how good of a show Daria was. A spin-off of Beavis and Butthead, the series had an entirely different style and tone than its parent series, focusing more on dry humor and a more somber tone. Daria is filled with so many memorable characters and episodes that its really hard to narrow down what I would want to talk about in a single paragraph. The show is truly iconic, at least in my eyes, and is easily one of my favorite animated shows of all time. It’s been said before, but it bares repeating that Daria is a fantastic show that deserves all the praise it has received over the years.

Arrested Development

This one is technically cheating, since it has been revived and received a fourth season, there hasn’t been any new content produced for the show in some time. For those not familiar with the series, it originally ran on Fox from 2003 to 2006, when it was cancelled despite the series receiving critical acclaim and numerous awards. Fans held out hope or a revival for years, and season four finally debuted on Netflix in 2013.

Seeing new episodes of the show was great, but with the conflicting schedules of the actors many of the episodes were unable to feature the entire cast together at once, which caused the fourth season to feel disjointed. The first three seasons still hold up incredibly well, and season four is worth a watch just to see what the characters had been up to since the series had been cancelled. With news of a possible fifth season filming in 2016, this is a great time to jump on the band wagon for this unde-appreciated show.

He is a senior editor at Kulture Shocked. A seasoned gamer, Zach has been playing video games since the early 90s and have owned everything from the NES to the Xbox One. Aside from video games, Zach is a nerd of all trades and dabbles in everything from collectible card games to Gunpla.